


Monsters Eat Little Children

by LiinHaglund



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Murder, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Loki's Kids, Other, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7868251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiinHaglund/pseuds/LiinHaglund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki isn't Laufey's son. He's Odin's son, but Odin didn't want anyone to know of his Jotun blood from his mother Bestla. When Loki is born he looks too much like a Jotun and Odin puts a glamor on him. This has consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing on another story and just had this idea fly into my head. I know it's all been done to death, but whatever.

Loki would plead ignorance if anyone confronted him, but he knew very well where he was. You couldn't confuse the mild winter in Asgard with the frigid chill of Jotunheim.

It was a game of sorts.

It was forbidden to enter the realm of the Frost Giants, so naturally that was what he did. It was a test to his skill, to see how well and how long he could hide from Odin and Heimdall.

He had even spotted a few Frost Giants in the distance once. They weren't how he had imagined, nowhere near as monstrous... nowhere near as big.

Loki was just going to explore the landscape a little today. He was curious and Jotunheim was a big unknown realm.

He yelped in surprise when he jumped from a low cliff and found that the ground was a pile of snow. The fall was softened by the snow, but he still fell for a long time before the snow became dense enough to stop his fall. He knew which way was up, even though the hole had collapsed and buried him, so he started to struggle out of the dark, wet and cold snowdrift.

It was much more tiring than he had thought it would be, and when someone pulled him out he was almost grateful.

“Been following you,” the Jotun said smugly. He looked like a warrior. “Sneaky little thing, sneaking in and out where he doesn't belong.”

Loki shook snow out of his hair. “Aren't you cold just wearing that?” Loki asked and nodded his head toward the only piece of clothing the Jotun wore.

The Jotun raised an eyebrow at that. He wasn't touching Loki, just crouched down keeping a close eye on him. It was waiting, Loki realized.

“Why did you pull me out?” Surely, letting him freeze to death would have saved the Jotun trouble.

“Sneaky little sneak has been here a lot, comes and goes and stays all day,” the Jotun said in a voice that was almost something parents would use with children when telling a story. “Should have died already. Sent word to the others.”

“I'll just go and not bother you again,” Loki offered, heart hammering in his chest.

“Too late, little sneak. Caught is caught,” the Jotun said.

Several more Jotun appeared, almost out of the air itself. Loki looked around and almost contemplated burrowing into the snowdrift again. The Jotun he had first met grabbed his shoulders and steered him to another Jotun.

The new one grabbed his hands and Loki allowed him rather than struggle. He was surrounded and alone. The first Jotun let go of his shoulders.

“Do you know the punishment for trespassing?” the Jotun holding his hands asked.

Loki shook his head and averted his eyes. He had often pictured being caught by Odin or Heimdall, but it had never occurred to him to worry about the natives.

One of his hands was let go and instead the Jotun grabbed his chin. “Look at me.”

Loki's free hand went to grab the large hand holding his face, almost as if it missed being held. It was an absurd thought and Loki would have laughed in another situation. The Jotun was cold to the touch, but not unpleasantly so. Eventually Loki raised his eyes enough to look the Jotun in the eyes again.

“He's just a kid, Laufey,” someone objected. Probably the Jotun Loki had first met.

“As if they spare ours,” the one holding him said.

Loki tried to squirm out of the giant's hold, but the grip was too firm. “Lemme go,” he whined. That was the only way to describe it, and he would have been embarrassed if he hadn't had bigger things to focus on.

Literally bigger.

Instead of letting go, Loki felt a chill run through him. As if his veins had turned to ice. He didn't bother to stop the tears or the sobs, because he was terrified by the time the coldness reached his chest and -

Nothing.

The Jotun holding him and forcing that coldness into his very bones looked perplexed.

Loki was surprised enough that he stopped sobbing and just waited for the monster to finish the job. He felt tears run down his cheeks and he wanted to scream for his mother. His clothes felt uncomfortable and stiff from being frozen.

Something within him snapped and everything went black.

 

* * *

 

Loki woke up, sure he was dead for a few seconds. His heart was beating, though, and spirits had no hearts. He had known that for a while now.

He was under something warm and heavy. A fur of some sort. When he tried to move his limbs felt weak and heavy. Someone stroked the fur and Loki felt the touch through it. He closed his eyes tight because it simply couldn't be his mother no matter how much he wanted to turn and see her there.

“No need to be scared,” a female voice said. It wasn't his mother.

Loki heard someone else moving around and burrowed deeper under the fur until he was sure nothing was visible. The woman kept up with her gentle strokes, as if Loki was a pet.

Perhaps he was.

“How is he?” a male voice asked.

There was a snarl, Loki assumed it came from the female.

“Oh hush you,” the male muttered, “we all thought he was an Aesir.”

That made Loki peek out of his hiding spot. The woman – a big blue monster – quickly wrapped him in the fur.

But Loki had seen.

“What did you do?” he asked as he touched his own arm carefully. It was still his arm. He was sure it was, but it looked -

“My idiot brother here attempted to kill you by freezing your blood. All it did was remove a glamor spell.”

“Glamor?” Loki repeated dumbly.

“Didn't you know you weren't Aesir?” the woman asked gently. For a monster she was very motherly.

“No, I'm -” Loki swallowed thickly and examined more of his skin. He was Aesir. Wasn't he?

Large blue hands cupped his face and gentle thumbs stroked his cheeks.

 

* * *

 

Loki felt better after a day and a half. He wasn't allowed to return to Asgard, but otherwise the woman – Nal – gave him anything he needed.

The man who had tried to kill him was not around as much, but Loki found he was much friendlier when he thought Loki was Jotun.

He wasn't.

Was he?

That evening a delegation from Asgard arrived to take him home. Nal brought him to the throne room where the Aesir demanded Loki be returned.

A lot of Jotun were there, curiously eyeing the spectacle.

Loki attempted to walk to them, but the Einherjar guards pointed their spears at him. Nal pulled him back in the nick of time before he was stabbed.

“I have no Aesir prince in my realm,” Laufey said with a smirk.

The court officials Odin had sent whispered among themselves for a while. Surely though, his mother and father would come? Loki knew the old Aesir officials, but they looked right through him, as if he was just -

“We did have a trespasser just days ago,” Laufey said, almost dangling the words as a juicy stake to a pack of dogs, “but it turned out to be one of our own.”

“He won't let me go back,” Loki whispered under his breath.

“You belong here,” Nal said gently. One of her hands was carding through his hair. “Odin he might have bargained with, had he come, but sending mere errand boys is an insult.”

“I want to go home,” Loki whispered. “I want to go to my mother, why do you keep me here?”

Nal kissed his cheek, gentle nails scratching his scalp. “Why isn't your mother here?”

“I wish she was,” Loki said.

 

* * *

 

When Loki had spent a week with the monsters he ran away. He just had to find a rift, then he could go home. He walked for days in the snow and over frozen thundra, but he found nothing. It was as if Yggdrasil had decided to trap him there.

He hadn't known he was followed until Laufey broke cover and approached him.

“I want to go home,” Loki told him.

“You did. You're here.”

Loki sighed sadly. “Was I a changeling? Did you put their real child back? Monsters do that. They take children and replace them with baby monsters.”

Laufey crouched down so that he was at Loki's eye-level. “What of the monsters who take little babies and pretend it's their own?”

“You killed me,” Loki whispered. “Now I'm a monster. Nal is nice because I'm a monster. You are too. If I turned back you'd kill me again.”

“What if we're not monsters?”

“Everyone says so,” Loki said confidently.

“What if they're wrong?”

“You'd let me go home if you weren't,” Loki whispered, trying to talk around a lump in his throat. “You'd let me go. You wouldn't have killed me if you weren't a monster.”

“I'm sorry,” Laufey said quietly. “I shouldn't have hurt you. Will you forgive me one day?”

Loki tried to smile, but he was too close to crying to manage more than a twitch of his lips.

“We've tried to find your real parents, but no one knows anything.” Loki sobbed, and Laufey held him. “You must have been born here, you're of our kind.”

“Monster,” Loki whispered.

“Jotun,” Laufey said, but they were the same thing. Weren't they?

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Loki had lived with Nal and Laufey until he hit his majority before he saw his father again. After hundreds of years with the monsters Odin came to Jotunheim along with Thor.

It's not an important visit, really, Odin was just showing Thor around the nine realms. Golden, precious Thor. Just as they were about to leave Loki asked: “Where did you find me?”

Odin turned to where Loki had been lurking between two pillars. “ _Loki_?”

“Was it during the War? Did you take me from here?”

“You are not from Jotunheim, Loki, you are my son. Mine and Frigga's.”

Loki laughed.

“You are,” Odin persisted. “My mother was Jotun. When you were born... we felt hiding your true colors might be best.”

Laufey scoffed from his throne and Thor gasped from Odin's side.

For once, Loki had no words.

“We looked everywhere for you,” Odin said.

“Laufey broke the glamor when he tried to kill me,” Loki said, having found his tongue. “He tried to freeze my blood, but instead of my heart turning to ice I passed out because of the spell breaking. When I woke up looking like _this_ , like the _monsters_ you told us stories about, all I wanted to do was go home.” Loki smirked. “But I am home, aren't I? Monsters belong with their kind, after all.”

“You're more Aesir and Vanir than Jotun.”

“Maybe I was,” Loki agreed. “Then. I've been here for six centuries. I spent what? Two in Asgard?”

Loki walked away, easily hopping up onto the dais and then Laufey's throne until he sat in the giant's lap.

“You should tell mother I am well,” Loki said cheerfully. “Would you like to meet my children?”

“You have children?” Thor asked.

Loki grinned widely when Laufey's hand started stroking his slightly bulging belly. “Turns out – which I had _no idea about_ , another thing my parents kept from me – that I'm a hermaphrodite. I'm actually pregnant again.”

Their two sons came forward and stood on either side of their father's throne.

“Aren't they lovely?” Loki asked, voice softening as he stroked the cheek of his oldest.

 

 


End file.
